2015 St. Louis Catholic Men for Christ Conference

Conference Date: February 7, 2015

Speakers: George Weigel

George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

From 1989 through June 1996, Mr. Weigel was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he led a wide-ranging ecumenical and inter-religious program of research and publication on foreign and domestic policy issues. From June 1996, as a Senior Fellow, Mr. Weigel prepared a major study of the life, thought, and action of Pope John Paul II. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II was published to international acclaim in the fall of 1999 and has since been translated into twelve languages, with a Chinese edition currently in progress.

Mr. Weigel is the author or editor of some twenty other books, including The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (Doubleday, 2010), Practicing Catholic: Essays Historical, Literary, Sporting, and Elegiac (Crossroad, 2012), Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (Basic, 2013), and Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (Basic, 2013). His essays, op-ed columns, and reviews appear regularly in major opinion journals and newspapers across the United States. A frequent guest on television and radio, he is also the senior Vatican analyst for NBC News. His weekly column, “The Catholic Difference,” is syndicated to sixty newspapers.

Mr. Weigel received a B.A. from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore and an M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. He is the recipient of eighteen honorary doctorates in fields including divinity, philosophy, law, and social science.

Tim Staples

Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization at Catholic Answers, but he was not always Catholic. Tim was raised a Southern Baptist. Although he fell away from the faith of his childhood, Tim came back to faith in Christ during his late teen years through the witness of Christian televangelists. Soon after, Tim joined the Marine Corps.

During his four-year tour, he became involved in ministry with various Assemblies of God communities. Immediately after his tour of duty, Tim enrolled in Jimmy Swaggart Bible College and became a youth minister in an Assembly of God community. During his final year in the Marines, however, Tim met a Marine who really knew his faith and challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources. That encounter sparked a two-year search for the truth. Tim was determined to prove Catholicism wrong, but he ended up studying his way to the last place he thought he would ever end up: the Catholic Church!

He converted to Catholicism in 1988 and spent the following six years in formation for the priesthood, earning a degree in philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania. He then studied theology on a graduate level at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland for two years. Realizing that his calling was not to the priesthood, Tim left the seminary in 1994 and has been working in Catholic apologetics and evangelization ever since.

Terry Barber

Terry has recorded numerous podcasts on Saint Joseph Podcasts called Culture Warriors for Christ, addressing all the social issues affecting our culture today. He has over 30 years of experience in evangelization in the Catholic Church; his two most influential talks today are "The Ten Commandments of Evangelization" and "The Five Reasons to be Catholic." Terry Barber is from Los Angeles, California. He is a true pioneer of Catholic evangelization.

Terry has been instrumental in helping promote Catholic radio since the 1980s, at which time there were only 5 Catholic stations across the country. He currently co-hosts Reason’s for Faith Live on EWTN Radio with Jesse Romero, which is heard on over 170 Catholic radio stations around the country. Terry is the founder of St. Joseph Communications and the Catholic Resource Center, the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Lighthouse Catholic Media, and he has hosted countless conferences. Terry has touched millions of lives through CD evangelization; in the past 31 years, he has distributed over 25 million inspirational Catholic audio CDs and DVDs. If you have ever listened to Dr. Scott Hahn, Jesse Romero, Steve Wood, Steven Ray, Tim Staples, or Dr. Michael Barber, you have indirectly been influenced by this man through his ministry.

Before working full-time to promote the Catholic Faith, Terry was one of the top real estate producers in the state of California. Terry has come to share his enthusiasm and to encourage us to embrace our calling as Catholic men to share the Good News of Christ and the Catholic Faith with our family, friends, and the whole world. Terry and his wife, Danielle, have been happily married for 21 years and have 4 children.